This World is Not Our Home
This broken world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come. Heb. 13:14
The reason people who are trusting in Jesus can have peace even when circumstances are not peaceful is they know their time in this world is a temporary arrangement. This world is not our home. We are called to serve others and promote justice as we travel toward our permanent home with the Lord in the invisible landscape. We are just passing through. We have been given some glimpses of the time when we will truly be home. I wanted to share a few with you this weekend.
New Heavens and New Earth
Peter, in his second letter, explains how the current world will be done away with and be replaced with “the new heavens and new earth” God has in store for his children:
But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God’s righteousness. 2 Pet 3:13
That was a small glimpse.
John wrote in the book of Revelation a much fuller picture of what life in the new heavens and new earth would be like:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. Rev 21:1
Then John shared some detail about life in our new home:
3 I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” Rev 21:3-4
GOD WILL BE TANGIBLY PRESENT WITH HIS PEOPLE
Even though we live in his presence every day, in our present state we have to actively maintain our awareness that he is near. In that day, he will be totally obvious and will be VERY hard to miss! The passage says, “God himself will be with them.”
GOD WILL HIMSELF COMFORT US
Do you remember when you were a very small tot and crying because you scraped your knee or perhaps you had been called names by the neighborhood bully? You really were hurting and crying real tears. Your mom put you on her knee and wiped the tears away from your eyes as she gently comforted you. I think the truth, “God will wipe every tear from their eyes” is the most amazing revelation of God’s compassion in the whole Bible. He is like a mother soothing her child, tenderly wiping the tears away! What genuine comfort that will be!
EVERY WRONG AND BROKEN THING WILL BE MADE RIGHT
“There will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” All evil and everything that brings brokenness and pain will have been dealt with. Those things are banished from God’s presence and from his people.
Not a Place of Idleness, but of Purposeful Work
When we sit around and think about what eternal life with God will be like after the day when all things are settled, we sometimes think about floating on clouds or hanging around in choir robes singing hymns for a few thousand years. Don’t get me wrong. I think there will be A LOT of singing in our eternal home, but there will also be something incredible for us to do:
And they will reign forever and ever. Rev. 22:5
Speaking about us, if we love God, the scriptures say “they will reign forever and ever!”
Do you remember when God created the man and the woman, what his purpose for them was?
So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” Gen 1:27-28.
Did you see that?!?! God told the man and woman to govern the earth - to REIGN over it!
Our initial purpose when God created us was to reign over the earth with God’s blessing and with his guidance, of course. But we rebelled and decided that maybe God wasn’t good, and we fell from our position as princes and princesses reigning over the world that God had created for us to rule. We blew it!
God has been working to restore us to our original position ever since we fell. And this word from the Bible: “they will reign forever and ever” lets everyone know that God will be successful in restoring us to our true purpose for which we were created.
What a wonderful final glimpse at God’s plan for us in the invisible landscape.
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Isaiah 25:6-9 (ESV):
"On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow**, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” "
**”Marrow” in Hebrew in that verse is a passive participle verb: “wiping” (of the mouth). Sounds like we will need a LOT of napkins at this feast with the Lord!!!